Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Via Simon Clark, The Times today reports on the revelation that Anna Soubry was almost certainly the source for Patrick Wintour's article describing plain packaging as a done deal.

"We are going to follow what they have done in Australia. The evidence suggests it is going to deter young smokers. There is going to be legislation," said a senior Whitehall source said.

It led to this rather awkward moment for David Cameron, who just happened to be in Bradford the very next day. Bradford being a major centre for packaging manufacturers!

I'm sure she was hoping that her discussions with Wintour would remain anonymous. However, thanks to a {cough} FOI request we know she was alone among a list of nine influential DoH personnel to meet Wintour 5 days before his article was published (click to enlarge).

Yup, I'll bet Dave was well chuffed with Soubry for that disastrous timing.

Scroll on to this week, and the Editor of the Lancet tweeted this.

Word arrives that Anna Soubry has fallen out of love with Jeremy Hunt. She wants plain cigarette packaging but he is resisting her. #badlove
— richard horton (@richardhorton1) April 21, 2013

Again the 'dickie bird' in the know isn't attributed, but this time there isn't an option of the FOIA to try to narrow it down. However, it will be someone not averse to passing privileged info to journalists, and perhaps a bit unrestrained. Mouthy to a politically naive extent, you could say.

‘To be quite frank, when the PM said to me, ‘I want you to do public health’, I thought, ‘Oh boss, I respect you so much, but I’m the only woman here and I get public health – I hope there’s no connection there.

‘Maybe I can make people realise that this is not a soft bloody girly option, it is a big serious job. I’m a huge fan of our prime minister… but I did sit there in the cabinet room and think, ‘Boss, you do know what you’ve just done? You’ve given public health to the girl again, except I’m not a girl, I’m a tough old bird’.’

Facepalm.

Not satisfied with dumping Cameron in the slurry last month, she's gone and done it again ... as the Speccie points out.

But does Soubry think the PM sees some jobs as ones that should only be done by women? That’s not a particularly complimentary implication about his approach to equalities, and will also be a gift to Labour, which likes to make a big fuss about the Prime Minister’s women problem.

Miss Soubry insisted that she is still “convinced” that minimum pricing is correct and claimed that the measure is “still official policy”.

Conservative cabinet ministers seem to have correctly realised that minimum pricing punishes the innocent poor, and is a pretty stupid policy for "Tory toffs" (or "the nasty party") to be promoting. Yet here's Soubry stubbornly putting the interests of state-funded career prohibitionists above the welfare of her party after being mesmerised by appalling junk science.

If "Public Health" gets the reputation for being a recurrent political pain in the arse position, hopefully the powers that be will simply relegate its importance in order to reduce political embarrassment or put ultra-conservative (with a small "c") Ministers in charge of it. You know, the sort of people who make sure the i's are dotted and the boxes are ticked but aren't the type to make major pronouncements or come up with ideas that rock the boat.

I met Anna Soubry at a party about 8-10 years ago. She came across as an embarrassing big-mouthed buffoon then, and nothing has changed. She seemed to think she was straight-talking and full of common-sense, but in fact she was full of hot air and wouldn't listen to anyone who didn't agree with her. It was like watching a Spitting Image puppet in action, a walking stereotype from bygone days.

She said recently that she came into politics to fight lefties, but everything she has fought for since becoming an MP could have come straight from Labour.